Can you imagine blurbs like these on the back of a Civil War dust jacket?Here is a work so controversial that some will barely be able to sit still as they turn the pages.
... ambitious new paradigm...
This study, highly original in both conception and content...
I suppose they could put that stuff on Tom Carhart's book but the publisher opted for James McPherson instead: Mr Nihil Obstat, Mr Goodhousekeeping Seal of Approval, Mr. Tom Carhart's professor.
That's significant, my friends. But the significance I leave to you.
Those blurbs could also have been attached to Beatie, pehaps Detzer, perhaps Rafuse, maybe Harsh. Richard McMurry wanted to be associated with "a New Civil War Paradigm," but he didn't leave it to the marketing department, he put it in the title of his book. ACW controversy: scary. Risky for sales.
That's significant too, my friends. Consider the significance.
And yet, love them or hate them, many ACW readers are contentious ... worth risking a little controversy on when you can get them off the skinny fringe of American Heritage doctrine.
The blurbs above come from the King's Three Faces an attempt to debunk the foreshadowing of Revolution in Colonial history. I bought the book on the basis of the blurbs. (It is not to be confused with The King's Two Bodies, a treatise on metaphysics in medieval politics.)
Bravo, UNC Press. Something tells me one of your editors, Gary Gallagher, was on vacation when this provocation passed over the transom.
And - on a more personal note - I sorely need someone to pave the way for my future romantic, heroic pop history biography of Guy Carleton (top right), the Chiang Kai Shek of American Nationalism and counter-revolutionary extraordinaire, plotting victory from the Formosa that was once Manhattan.
You think I'm joking. But that will be a work so controversial that some will barely be able to sit still as they turn the pages...
